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After posting a bit of "writing practice" that got a lot of love, I floated out a comment about wanting to revive the old superheroes RP we had earlier, making it the second incarnation of such an RP in Wintreath and the like sixth incarnation of the RP we had in Ainur. That comment as well got a lot of love, and even a few PMs suggesting that I take to the forums and request it.

I know its probably bad form to ask for a revival or a reboot of an RP that never really was going well and now has been long dead. However, demand is high, we're in the middle of NSummer, people are excited, and I have some very good ideas as to how to drive the plot along. If I would be allowed to make and run this RP again, I think it would be a very good thing for this region.

Thoughts?

I have like twelve ideas already. I've already shelved the 84 ones for antiheroes because those are overdone.
Grotesque numerical exaggerations aside, hell yes.

I'm waiting to give any input.

I imagine in terms of OOC stuff and power limitations it would be structured more or the same as last time, although I've been thinking of easing my restrictions on invulnerability, invisibility, and teleportation. I still don't think I'm going to let up on mind control though.

I'm reviving good ol Dan Morris from the first RP, but this time he's even EDGiER

I'm reviving good ol Dan Morris from the first RP, but this time he's even EDGiER

that is simply not possible

I'm reviving good ol Dan Morris from the first RP, but this time he's even EDGiER

that is simply not possible

He's a villain from the start, is a serial arsonist and a pyromaniac, and listens to that one MC 900 ft Jesus song about lighting shit on fire on repeat.

I mean, the important thing to suss out is the structuring of it.
Is this like a cape punk world where superpowers have existed for a long time, or where the powers are just beginning to emerge en masse?
Are superheroes considered just vigilantes, and so criminals of a sort, or does (at least local) government cooperate with them?
Is there some knowledge of a wider multiverse (e.g. Galactus, Thanos, Nova Corps style stuff), or is it very restricted to Earth and Earth's problems?
Is Reed Richards useless, or has he fixed a lot of problems?

I mean, the important thing to suss out is the structuring of it.
Is this like a cape punk world where superpowers have existed for a long time, or where the powers are just beginning to emerge en masse?
Are superheroes considered just vigilantes, and so criminals of a sort, or does (at least local) government cooperate with them?
Is there some knowledge of a wider multiverse (e.g. Galactus, Thanos, Nova Corps style stuff), or is it very restricted to Earth and Earth's problems?
Is Reed Richards useless, or has he fixed a lot of problems?

Superhumans first started to appear around the same time as the first comic books, in the 1920s/1930s. They exist at a literally one in a million rate that grows with population. The United States, as a result of its population and first world media-soaked nature, has the highest population of known supers, but it is suspected that India and China have more that have simply not been found yet. As such, superpowers are known to exist and, while news about superheroes and villains is rare, it's certainly not unheard of.

As for superheroes, it really depends. The United States federal government instituted the Super Corps back in the 1950's as a way to make use of and keep tabs on patriotic superhumans while allowing them to do varying degrees of good work, and many other nations and alliances (including the European Union, NATO, USSR/Russia, and China) have followed suit. The CIA is also rumored to be involved with communicating and gang-pressing supers, but exactly how or why they do this is unknown. In the United States, independent superhero organizations such as the Boston-Washington Justice Alliance, Great Lakes League, and the Pacific Powers Coalition are allowed to exist, but are frequently the targets of police/Super Corps raids and class-action lawsuits when their operations get too destructive. The degree to which local governments work with the superheroes varies wildly, with some police departments operating on (federally illegal) orders to shoot superhumans on sight if they're near a crime scene (like how the NYPD treats Spider-Man but worse), and other police working closely, publicly, and regularly with superheroes who live nearby (like how old-school Metropolis treats old-school Superman). Most police just stay out of their way, taking help where they need it unless the superhero suddenly turns violent or gets too many cases in court thrown out. Some known superhumans are even in various police departments themselves, allowing easy access to a network of crime and disaster response while giving them some legal shielding. There has been an increase in lone-wolf vigilantism among the super community, however, causing concern for both the almost entirely human government and the struggling superhero leagues.

The RP is restricted to one planet in one universe. I've been wondering if I could fit in a cosmic subplot with conspiracy theory fodder (like a underground war between the Majestic Twelve, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, and several criminal and political "ghosts"), but nothing truly timey-wimey or multiverse-y.

Reeds Richards is useful, but is frequently the target of (sometimes necessary, sometimes not) government regulation, assassination, warfare or fraud and theft, often orchestrated by similar power hungry Reed Richards. It's often a zero sum game with those guys.

Couple of issues -
One, if it's one in a million, that suggests 300-odd superhuman individuals within the US. That doesn't seem sufficient for the wide, wide number of areas you've suggested, they would be in, or for there to be supervillains. Moreover, with 'only' (insofar as 300 is kind of a small number) that many people, odds are they'd all know each other. That seems like it'd be a little weird, for all that the Justice League seems like it's entirely on a first-name basis.
Scaling it up to 1:100,000, or even 1:10,000, seems like it would provide numbers of a sort that would allow for a lot more of the comic-book style hijinks.
(Also yay for removing wider cosmologies and thus axing the majority of the Superman-equivalents, although I still think the Flying Brick archetype is a pretty handily generic one)

On a tangential note, what is the opinion of 'superhumans' whose power is pretty much 'I'm rich bitch', a la Batman, Iron Man, Lex Luthor, Green Goblin, et al? Yes, yes, they all build themselves awesome toys and stuff so they can play with the actual superhumans, but still - are they regulated as superhumans, or just sort of given the same kind of one-eye-closed treatment you'd expect an intelligent, attractive, and most importantly ludicrously wealthy individual to get from the government?
Tangent to this tangent - what about badass normal types - the...well, the whole Bat-family really, the variously-colored Arrows (although I guess Oliver Quinn is also pretty rich), Hawkeyes, Punishers, that sort?

On an additional tangent, what's the overall tone? Silly but fun Golden/Silver Age stuff? Grim but depressing Dark Age stuff? Or the sort of halfway-both-and-certainly-more-nuanced-but-really-still-mostly-just-cheap-drama stuff that has defined it since ~Ultimate Marvel first became a thing?

Two-
If government agencies are press-ganging superhumans...(not that that's ever worked in the comics. They just either turn to crime or there's some overblown Civil War arc and then Patriotism dies on the steps of a court as a neo-conservative billionaire falls to his knees and weeps over the results of his victory. SYMBOLISM MUCH!?) I imagine they're not manufacturing their own then. Which is a disappointment, because I feel like a good half of them (well, in Marvel comics, anyway) are the result of some government experiment or another. From Captain America to the various people who suffered through Weapon X, there's a lot of room to work there.

*cracks knuckles*
Alright. Let's begin.

For starters, I have to disagree. Yes, 300 (322, to be a little more exact and to abuse rounding) is typically a small-ish number when you are talking about groups of people. However, I think that it is a large enough number to allow for a diversity of powers, alignments, walks of life, etc. Yes, when you use population statistics to calculate where these superhumans would be things get strange rather quickly (LA, which according to Hollywood logic should be swarming with supers, gets four), but the one in a million statistic is meant to be for the whole world, not necessarily for each area. And as for the familiarity thing, you could be right, but can you name three hundred different people (common celebrities and famous politicians excluded) and tell me something about them? Even if you could, you might be racking your brain for a while. 322 is a number that is large enough to allow for anonymity where it is needed and small enough to encourage familiarity where it is wanted. It's the size of a town, but not a village.

I like the Flying Brick model of superpower. You can do a lot with it and it has a lot of soul. What I don't like is interdimensional ass-pulling, which comic book writers are stereotypically guilty of. Also, unlike other writers might with their universes, I have NO interest in touching the previous generations of Super RP. They each died for a reason.

For Batman-esque rich guy technological heroes, a little of both. Nothing in any superpower legislation would apply to them, they wouldn't be investigated by any Power Crimes divisions, and nobody would even really call them a superhero unless they wanted to embellish. Politically and culturally, however they are treated like supers, but the fact that they are well-monied insulates them from the bad side effects of wrecking stuff to save lives. However, they are frequently the target of "The Entire Plot of Iron Man 2"-style assassination attempts by humans and supers alike, and although they would probably be accepted if they attempted to join an independent superhero organization because of the money and prestige, they would face no small amount of resentment from actual superheroes. As close as it can get, money can't buy respect and it can't disperse a government that's been pushed over the line.

As for badass normals, they are strictly considered to be human. If they do vigilantism, they'll be treated slightly less well than superheroes, and if they show up to the Super Corps or an independent super organization they'll be laughed out unless their abilities are truly god-tier. The CIA and normal branches of the military court these people heavily with generous job offers, though. So there's that.

The feeling of the universe is nuanced. It's generally positive with goofy moments, but it's also punctuated by moments of intense violence, grief, and cynicism, as well as constant tensions between the rich and poor, powered and human, etc. In short, it's like real life but a little better.

I've thought about having man-made supers around, perhaps as a side effect of something like MK ULTRA or mutations caused by various nuclear disasters. Perhaps that could be the compromise: there are only 322 NATURAL superhumans in the United States: the rest are technological, "badass normal", mutant, or man-made. I would say "maybe, leaning no" in the RP's current mental form, but I would definitely be willing to let that go if everyone wanted artificial supers.

I don't mean to suggest that they would be friends universally, or even all of them were acquainted with each other. But I certainly think that, for example, Firestorm might be aware of Ice Queen's existence, even if these two just-made-up-villains have never actually met.
Moreover, considering the sheer number of Rogues Gallery villains relative to the number of heroes (each has, what, 5 at a bare minimum? Batman and Spider-Man each probably have somewhere in the 40s-50s), it just strikes me that some degree of superhuman capacity must exist to a fairly common degree for there to be the same sort of comic-book-style shenanigans going on.
I suppose if it's not supposed to be comic-book-y, but instead more of a 'realistic superhuman take', then we'd wind up with really few actual heroes, and more, uh...Heroes (that TV show from like a decade ago), I guess.

And I mean, interdimensional ass-pulls are handy sometimes. Superman. Green Lantern. Martian Manhunter. They wouldn't exist without some degree of wider cosmology. What I complain about more is the revolving door of interstellar villains that show up on a routine basis to fuck with Earth, and...we just sort of go on with our regular lives, instead of being like 'oh shit, aliens exist, our superheroes beat them because hell yeah humanity and shit, let's steal their technology, reverse engineer it, and fucking colonize the galaxy'.
So that's what I meant by wider cosmology as opposed to like using older generations of Super to fuel things.

I guess the question with Batman-esque people is, if we don't treat, say, Iron Man as a superhero, why do we treat Cyborg as one? His only power is he's got ludicrously high-tech shit stuck in him that is fucking useful for beating the shit out of people. Iron Man has that too, but he can take it off and go back to chilling in Stark Tower or whatever sipping a beer out of his human flesh hands.

Poor Hawkeye. And, technically speaking, Captain America, since he's not actually 'superhuman', just 'peak human'.

That's a nice ideal and all, but nuance is hard to pull off. Much easier to pick one consistent tone and sort of stick with that, especially in a multi-person thing like this where mood whiplash is a bit harder to deal with.

I mean, if you're counting 'mutants' separately from 'naturally occurring' superpowers (what form does that take aside from just mutation?), I'm not sure where exactly most powers would arise from. And I don't even know if just having, y'know, the ability to fire eye lasers or whatever should be the only standard of superhuman ability. Some dude with an IQ of 450 who builds himself a pimp suit of flying powered armor to fight crime should still count as superhuman, even if physically he's your average Joe (that sounds like Iron Man but he doesn't have explicitly superhuman intelligence - and let's remember that in comics, every other person has 'genius-level intelligence').

You could be right. My idea was that supers are TRULY exceptional, and the whole one-in-a-million thing was supposed to be a rule that would enforce that within the larger world. Within our RP, the point is moot, because unless something truly miraculous (or devastating, depending on your point of view) happens to Wintreath, this RP will never have more than 20, 25 players, far from the 322 American/7.5k Global limit. Also, I'm not expecting everyone to fit into a clear team match of heros vs. villains. I'm expecting most characters to either mostly do good things or mostly do bad things, for different and often conflicting reasons. I want muh nuance.

Oh, I see. Well, if we wanted to do the whole conspiracy theory war thing, there could definitely be a wider cosmology for that, with Grey Men, Green Men, and Lizard Shapeshifters making their rounds and the MJ-12 and Templars trying to limit their influence. However, I would like it if this world worked mostly like the one I live in, so there wouldn't be any significant reverse engineering. If it were to happen at all, it would be under the strictest government supervision imaginable, like what people think of Area 51. Again, this isn't set in stone, but if people want I can make this a part of the RP.

I don't know. Maybe they both should be treated as superheroes.

Poor America.

I hear your comment and I am going to ignore it. Good stories need happy moments and sad moments.

I pulled the whole mutant thing out of my ass to be honest. I was thinking that natural supers would be the most powerful, and mutants have powers with drawbacks. I'm not adhering strongly to the 322 limit anymore so the point might be moot.

So this would be along the lines of the last RP but complete reset with different characters? I'm in

I'm in. I ended up taking an extended LOA from the region last time but it was a fun idea so I'll give it another shot.